Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday March 15, 2017 @06:20PM
from the on-the-up-and-up dept.

New submitter fisted writes: The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 7 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Some highlights of the 7.1 release are:

NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone. Free support services are available via our mailing lists and website. Commercial support is available from a variety of sources. More extensive information on NetBSD is available from http://www.NetBSD.org. You can download NetBSD 7.1 from one of these mirror sites.

The NetBSD port for i386, amd64, mac68k, macppc, and many others can execute a great number of native Linux programs, using the Linux emulation layer. Generally, when you think about emulation you imagine something slow and inefficient because, often, emulations must reproduce hardware instructions and even architectures (usually from old machines) in software. In the case of the Linux emulation, this is radically different: it is only a thin software layer, mostly for system calls which are already very similar between the two systems. The application code itself is processed at the full speed of your CPU, so you don't get a degraded performance with the Linux emulation and the feeling is exactly the same as for native NetBSD applications.

This is one of the reasons why so many former Linux users have moved to FreeBSD or NetBSD after being driven away from Linux by systemd, PulseAudio, GNOME 3, and other problematic software like that. Most Linux programs worth using compile just fine on the *BSDs, but if there are legacy, closed-source Linux applications that must be used there is at least some chance that they may work on FreeBSD or NetBSD. This makes for a very easy transition path away from Linux, or more correctly, away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

This is one of the reasons why so many former Linux users have moved to FreeBSD or NetBSD after being driven away from Linux by systemd, PulseAudio, GNOME 3, and other problematic software like that. Most Linux programs worth using compile just fine on the *BSDs, but if there are legacy, closed-source Linux applications that must be used there is at least some chance that they may work on FreeBSD or NetBSD. This makes for a very easy transition path away from Linux, or more correctly, away from systemd (it isn't the Linux kernel itself that most people have problems with, of course).

Do you think that switching to a *BSD is easier than just installing a distribution without systemd?

I get the hate for systemd and pulseaudio, but Linux being "legacy"? Please. The fact is that the BSD's are fossils moving at glacial speeds, with the possible exception of DragonflyBSD. They have just about zero mind-share outside their sect-like cults, whose pathetic attempts to rewrite reality - "Linux is legacy! OSX is FreeBSD!" - does them no service, and generally speaking they are understaffed, have packaging system that are clumsy, antiquated and fragile.

I get your point if you were referring to NetBSD, but FreeBSD does have a bit of mindshare, even if dwarfed by Linux. It's the underpinnings of network OSs like Juniper, its NAS is widely used, it's used by pFsense, and its typically the most pioneering of the BSDs. As far as packaging system, PC-BSD/TrueOS has PBI, which takes care of library dependencies - something I'm not aware that.deb or.rpm do.

I do agree that calling Linux legacy is out of place, and that some things, like TrueOS, have stalle

License is not what keeps BSD where it is - it's inertia. Linux himself admitted that had something like FreeBSD or NetBSD existed during the time he was looking for an OS, he may have used that and not developed Linux.

If anything, the license is what's encouraged companies to adapt it in preference to the GPL licensed software. It's the reason companies like Juniper, Sony (w/ Busybox) have gone w/ BSD. It's why Android uses a BSDL licensed userland instead of GNU. It's why the consoles have gone w/

Over two and half decades I have used every *nix out there, both open and commercial. That is except for NetBSD. Perhaps it's time I give it a couple months attention. I have not had a serious nerd fix in awhile. Maybe I will find a good reason to put it to persistent use. Any NetBSD users out there that want to give me a heads up on the low down, I would be much obliged. If any such people wonder what I might use it for, consider anything and everything. I'm universal like that.

It's a BSD variant that will run on just about any oddball vintage hardware you have at your disposal..... 68K Macs, Atari TT's, VAX, Alpha, SPARC, UltraSPARC, sgi, DECstations, GE Microwaves, Sharp Can Openers, Compaq iPaq.

I found it nice for playing on SPARC32. The Linux distros have dropped sparc32, with Debian Etch being the last one I know of - if there's another I'd love to know about it. The linux kernel still supports sparc32, if you can find a distro to run it in.
The NetBSD way of doing things took some adjusting, but its worth it to run modern software on some really old systems - like Sun2/3!

... Some highlights of the 7.1 release are...
-Initial DRM/KMS support for NVIDIA graphics cards...
All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone.